


we're still at the peak (so where do we go from here?)

by kisaki (miiruwrites)



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:29:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27114025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miiruwrites/pseuds/kisaki
Summary: An instant meeting and an eternity that changed their lives for better or for worse, thought it's hard to tell with all of them, even after all is said and done.After all, what do you do in a world without the one thing you said you wouldn't want to live without?(Tsumugi reflects months after the killing game's end - and where she can go from here.)
Relationships: Saihara Shuichi & Shirogane Tsumugi
Kudos: 15





	we're still at the peak (so where do we go from here?)

**Author's Note:**

> title from nagaku mijikai masturi (long and short festival)

“Sometimes, I wonder if it was a good thing that I survived.”

It’s said almost conversationally, as if this isn’t something they’ve heard time and time again.

Yet it’s still a thought that crosses her mind every now and again, despite the months (it’s getting close to a year, isn’t it) that it’s been since the game’s end. Since Danganronpa’s end, since the end of her world and everything she’s known. And, what would’ve been her own end, if something had gone differently, if something else had happened during that last execution.

Does Tsumugi Shirogane regret being alive still? Not really, she has to say. She’s _alive_ and that’s better than what would’ve awaited her if Kiibo (bless his robotic heart; despite what she said, he’s something more than the audience’s surrogate. A creation of Team Danganronpa’s design, but a _person_ before all that. How long did it take for her to realize that she has to wonder) had done something different during the destruction of the academy. She’d walked into this game well aware of her fate, and had accepted it. That she would die and her death would just be the beginning of a new, grander season of Danganronpa. That’s all that would’ve mattered, and she would’ve been content with it.

Of course, fate seems to have other plans. Or the outside world seemed to have different plans in store for her. She’s still not quite sure of _why_ she survived, but there’s got to be some reason for it. 

Or maybe she’s just deluding herself into thinking there’s a reason she’s still alive. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s tried to do that. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s what happened, and that four survivors made their way out of the rubble instead of three.

She really doesn’t blame the others for not being happy she’s still alive. She’s done horrible things to them after all; to them and everyone involved in ~~this season~~ this killing game. Yet somehow, it’s ended up like this: the four of them are living together, and the three of them don’t really speak to her that much, but it was better than her going off on her own they had rationalized. 

They don’t want her trying to crawl her way back to Team Danganronpa or going off and doing something else. She’s still dangerous in their eyes. After all, she’s the big bad mastermind to them and nothing more than that. 

(Was she a friend once upon a time? Was she anything to them? It doesn’t matter in the end she supposes, considering how it was all supposed to turn out. It’s hard to plan for much else besides the expected reactions and your eventual death after all.)

Harukawa refuses to speak to her more than necessary. The assassin has made it clear what she thinks of her, and had been the one to suggest that they just leave her alone when they found her. That she should be left to her own devices (or that she was better off _dead,_ after all, having the blood of two of their ~~castmates~~ classmates on her hands directly and everyone else’s indirectly, but no one there was brave enough to say those words that they had all been thinking) but it had been pointed out to her how much more dangerous she could be left alone. So it’s an unspoken agreement that they don’t speak to each other, and whenever they do it’s like pulling out teeth. Their words are tense and harsh, like saying anything remotely _kind_ to each other is physically painful. She doesn’t hold her breath waiting for something different to happen, because what’s the point in waiting for something that will never happen? She’s the one person Harukawa wanted to kill more than anything, and she could do that whenever she wanted to. Tsumugi almost expects to wake up one of these days with a knife to her throat, for Harukawa to just finally do it and put her out of her misery.

(It’ll never come though. Harukawa didn’t want to kill to begin with, considering how ~~her character~~ she was. She wouldn’t become a murderer after all they had been though, which is ironic in so many ways. But maybe it’s because she has two people that still wanted to be around her and that she still cares for. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t want them to see her become a killer again. Maybe it’s something else entirely that she’ll never be able to figure out. Harukawa was never an easy one to nail down after all.)

Yumeno speaks to her more than Harukawa, but it’s still sparing at best. The magician had no strong feelings one way or another towards her it seemed, but she had been sad when it was revealed she was the mastermind. Did she care about her somehow (the thought pulls at her chest tightly, a painful ache - something she didn’t think possible, that someone would _care_ about her when the whole point of ~~her character~~ of who she was that no one _needed_ to care for her) when that’s not what she wanted to happen? She doesn’t know, considering what little time she gets to speak with her. Yumeno had been the one that spoke up about letting her come with them, letting her _live_ and she was grateful for that. Still, she doesn’t dare try to press her luck with her. If Yumeno wants to speak with her, she’ll let her but if she doesn’t want that, then she’ll let her have the space she needs. It’s only fair she thinks.

(Fair to _who_ she has to wonder, considering how much the youngest of their little quartet has suffered. Losing two people she cared about one after the other was hard on her, the sobs after the third trial still echo in her mind sometimes, in those long nights when her dark thoughts aren’t enough to keep her company. Those nights are always the hardest to deal with; the guilt and weight of her thoughts of what she’s done. She wonders if Yumeno has felt something like that, after the third trial, all tired out from crying but still saddened over what happened. What if she had been nicer to Tenko, what if she had been less dependent on Angie and her god, what if she hadn’t chosen the middle room for the séance, all the what ifs of how things could’ve been different. It wouldn’t surprise her if those thoughts had crossed the other girl’s mind at one point or another. But there’s only so much that thinking about _what ifs_ that you can do. You just have to live with what’s happened, there’s no reset button or any spell that can turn back time. The past cannot be changed but the future can.)

Saihara… is an interesting case. The detective should have all the reasons in the world to not want to talk to her, but yet he does. He said nothing when they had found her, had let Harukawa and Yumeno argue about what to do with her, and only spoke up when he thought it was right to. Simply said that it wouldn’t do much harm to them to at least take her along with them. Harukawa had only glared at her, Yumeno had said nothing but there was a silent agreement between them all. And so she had followed them all out of the ruins of the ~~set~~ academy, with barely a word said between them all. He’s the one that was supposed to defeat her, to prove that hope would always win, but he had rejected both hope and despair, and created this ending, the ending that she didn’t expect. The weakest protagonist yet, and still this was how it all ended, because he grew and became more than expected, more than what Tsumugi had written out. She doesn’t know whether she’s proud or resentful for how things turned out in the end.

Yet here they are, a conversation that they’d had so many times before, almost enough that it’s become a routine between them. She wonders if it’s a good thing she’s still alive, that a _mastermind_ is still alive, and Saihara just lets her speak. Let her get out all those thoughts that swirl around inside, words never spoken aloud and just let her speak her piece, before he says something. It’s a dance of sorts, counter and counterpoint, a thesis and antithesis, trial and error. He claims that it’s better that she’s alive than dead, that she can do something more than if she was dead, a chance for forgiveness and repenting. For atonement and punishment.

(It’s not forgiveness that she’s looking for anyways. It’s something that someone like _her_ doesn’t deserve.)

“Don’t we all wonder about that, Shirogane-san?”

Blue eyes widen just a bit, before looking back out through the window in front of them. For the longest time, she was just ‘Shirogane’ to all of them. All forms of honorifics and formalities gone, it’s what she deserved after all. Saihara had been the first to finally start calling her by that again. Saihara had been the one to handle talking to her most of the time, because Harukawa would rather go through another killing game than be kind to her, and Yumeno is too much of a mystery to determine what’s best to call her by. 

“I guess that’s fair enough, Saihara-kun. But yet, we’re here aren’t we, despite it all.” _I’m here despite it all_.

“That we are… but we’re not the same people we were all those months ago, now are we?”

Nine months can do a lot to a person after all. The Tsumugi Shirogane of nine months ago wouldn’t think it possible to be where she is now. Alive, atoning and transforming. She can’t quite undo her past actions, but she can make up for them. Change in a way she didn’t think was possible, and slowly but surely, start moving on from the things she’s been clinging onto for the past few years.

She wouldn’t be trying to stop clinging to Danganronpa if she hadn’t changed in some way after all.

“Yeah…” she trails off, searching for the right words. Saihara had been the one that asked her all those questions before: about her past, her love for fiction, her past love for Danganronpa. All of those questions made her realize how lost she had become, how she lost sight of what she wanted to do all this time. 

Where do you go from the peak of your womanhood? What do you do with this age of sensuality that’s no longer in full bloom?

_We have no place else to go._

“You’re right, Saihara-kun. We’re changing, slowly but surely.” _After all, nine months ago you wouldn’t spare me the time of day._

But maybe, maybe she can find her place here, in this world free of Danganronpa. Maybe she can find out what she wants to do. Find out what good her skills are for, and figure out where to go from this. 

A nod. “That we are. And maybe, while we change, we can find our own places in this world. Places we carve out for ourselves, and choices made by ourselves and no one else.”

They’re more than the characters she wrote them out to be. She’s learned that well enough in her time since the game’s ended. Harukawa is more than the cold assassin, Yumeno is more than the lethargic magician and Saihara is more than the weak-willed detective.

And she’s more than the plain jane cosplayer she made herself to be.

“We’re our own people after all. And that means we can decide our own paths, right?”

Amber eyes look at her, before Saihara nods, a small smile on his face, one that she mirrors as well. 

Their lives are finally their own, not just actors on a stage with set lines. Real people living their lives as best as they can, with suffering, heartache and trauma woven into them, into their souls. It clings to them (and all the others that came before them) and molds into them like a well-worn sweater - comforting, inviting and familiar, but an itch that no matter how much you scratch at it, will never go away. It aches, aches with emotions that are too much for them all to bear, but bear they must.

It’s the burden they pay to survive, but it’s a burden that helps them or hinders them, it all depends on how they take it. Will this burden weigh them all down, or will it allow them to rise like a phoenix from ashes?

It’s up to them in the end. Them and them alone. 

And though some memories may cling and fade over time, that time of theirs will never be forgotten, and their summer will not be let go.

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes you just get brainworms at 4am and it turns into something more than you were expecting!
> 
> okay but on a more serious note, this did come out of some late night thoughts, specifically about tsumugi and some thoughts about how she would be post game having survived. my opinion of her has changed drastically since completing v3, from outright hating her to loving her character. she's a character that became interesting and fun to explore, in various settings and ideas and it's fun to see just how she can change. a friend and i have talked/developed a lot about her relationship with saihara and that also played into this idea as well.
> 
> anyways! post game/canon tsumugi is fun to play around with since in a lot of ways, danganronpa means the world to her but it also made her lose sight of herself. saying that she can be fully redeemed is a bit of a stretch, but i do think given the chance she would be able to reflect and start over as best as she can. there's a lot of thoughts i have about this girl so who knows? you might see more stuff like this sooner or later from me!
> 
> comments and kudos are always appreciated and supportive!! also come find me on twitter @ataksukiarrival if you'd like to!


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